Across the street, a
girl stands lengthily at the
window, smoking and
looking at empty sidewalks,
sun-soaked on April first.
I wished the tourists
would disappear. Now they’re gone.
Watch what you wish for!
In purdah, in quarantine,
I dice one more aubergine.
—MH, 1 April 2020
Aubergine, once more.
braised, bartha-ed, basil-and-beef-
fried, in any form . . .
The thought invades aurous noons,
leaves sharp pugmarks on my dreams
these still-wintry nights.
Preschoolers play COVID-Age
tag in our courtyard:
not more than two at a time,
and “catch” with an out-flung glove.
—KN, 3 April 2020
We drove out to the
place they called Karantina
where crews of ships from
Europe once waited forty
days to be declared plague-free.
Desolate still, but
in a lonely high-rise, in
a vast gallery,
the ninety-year-old painter’s
new gouaches, texts, tapestries.
Afterward, a huge
Armenian lunch in Bourj
Hammoud with my two
young friends, nobody knowing
quarantine was just starting.
—MH, 3 April 2020
Bedlam just arrived
here, N writes from New Delhi’s
migrant worker camps.
How will they lock down millions
who have neither doors nor roof?
Millions who must walk
many moons to reach a home
to self-isolate.
Prime Minister Modi bids
his nation to light candles.
President Macron,
meanwhile, warned us off facemasks
unless really ill.
Spring: the dearth, in my two lands,
of roses for all the graves.
—KN, 4 April 2020
Rose garden hidden
in the Square du Veneur—
it’s starting to bud,
but the gates are locked, only
kids from the logements sociaux
in the enclosure
peer through the grates, in strange,
bright April sunlight.
Here’s a petition against
euthanizing the sick old.
—MH, 5 April 2020
Sick and old: for Laure
and Serge, teens from Block D, I
now tick both boxes.
L—four-inch heels keen across
cobblestones—rushes to hold
open all our doors.
Their mom, though, no longer hails
me with nod and smile:
chemo-shorn, brow-less beings
in masks could spell one more germ.
—KN, 6 April 2020
One more spell, one more
incantation—it’s only
The Art of the Fugue
or Hildegard of Bingen
or Alice Coltrane: music
calms anxiety.
Abida Parveen sings
a Hafez ghazal,
cross-legged, eloquent hands . . .
I pick out a word or two.
—MH, 6 April 2020
Two words, now, for me:
Hum dekhenge—We shall see.
Iqbal Bano soars
skyward on Faiz’s refrain, and
something steelier than hope
lights the heart once more.
Heart that fluttered last evening,
stalled a few instants:
a frog in the throat these days
hearkens to beasts less winsome.
—KN, 9 April 2020